Aircraft

The Stratolaunch aircraft has been slowly but surely edging towards takeoff with a series of increasingly rapid taxi tests. Its latest outing has seen the team clock the gargantuan dual-fuselage plane at speeds fast approaching those typically needed for regular aircraft to lift-off on the runway.

This fuel cell-powered coaxial octacopter just stayed aloft for 70 minutes of continuous flight, while carrying a 5kg (11-pound) weight. The record demonstrates the flight endurance capabilities of hydrogen-powered electric aircraft.

The US Air Force has signed off on the first of a tranche of four Boeing KC-46A Pegasus tanker aircraft, which will be delivered to McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas in the next month. Today's announcement comes after extensive testing of six KC-46 that involved over 3,800 flight hours.

Boeing has revealed a new ultra-thin wing concept designed to improve the performance of transonic aircraft at speeds of Mach 0.8. The latest version of the company's Transonic Truss-Braced Wing can fly higher and faster thanks to its optimized support truss and adjusted wing-sweep angle.

Boeing has released images of the world's largest fanjet engine being attached to the world's largest twin-engine aircraft. The photos show the still incomplete 777X in Boeing's Everett hangar with a General Electric GE9X engine fitted to the port wing.

The flying taxi space is becoming pretty crowded with what you could call audacious vehicle concepts, and Bell has just dropped another one at CES in Las Vegas. The newly unveiled Nexus is a look at the future of transport that turns to a tilting six-rotor design.

A partnership led by Rolls-Royce is building an all-electric aircraft that may smash into the record books with a top speed of over 300 mph (480 km/h) – beating the previous e-plane record of 210 mph (338 km/h) set in 2017 by Siemens.

Sikorsky and Boeing have been working on this high-speed, long-range, ultra-maneuverable military helicopter design for some time, and now they’ve released the first photos of what is expected to become a highly effective US Army utility helicopter sometime in the 2030s.

The team at Jetpack Aviation has just completed test flights in which two pilots flew close enough together to playfully boop each other on the nose. Next step: the world’s first jetpack race series, starting in 2019, and yes, the jetboards and jet suits of the world are invited to participate!

NATO's fleet of 14 Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS) aircraft have completed a major cockpit upgrade, swapping their analog dials dating from the 1970s with five full-color digital displays that will provide the crew with customizable screens for engine, navigation, and radar data.